


Exit Strategy

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Injury, DAY 4: Adventure, I promise there’s barely any zombies in it and it isn’t some Walking Dead au, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mild Gore, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22463812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: The end of the fucking world comes in the form of a zombie apocalypse, and Kun learns to adapt on his own. He takes care of himself, and only himself.That is until a stranger named Ten makes his way into Kun's oasis and suddenly, Kun doesn't have only himself to worry about anymore.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Comments: 45
Kudos: 168
Collections: In Every Lifetime: A KunTen Fan Week





	Exit Strategy

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in about 3 hours. It is completely un-betaed but this was a tiny, tiny adventure I wanted to get out there in time for the theme. 
> 
> Suturing, which is a medical procedure that should only be done by trained professionals is casually described here. Please do not replicate this. Please also see the endnotes. If any mention of blood makes you faint, it is best you stop reading now. 
> 
> I allude to Johnny and Kun's family being dead but never go into detail. If that upsets you, best you stop reading now. If I forgot to tag something you and you feel I should have, please let me know in the comments!

It’s the piercing scream that has Kun’s eyes flying open, his hand reaching for the dagger he keeps under the pillow.

It’s a scream that cuts through the silence that he has grown accustomed to in the four days that he has been camping out in this house, and it's jarring considering how peaceful it has been. This is the most sleep Kun has gotten in months. 

But now, the wail of a human, and for sure, to come, the groan of the horde that will follow. 

This house is a blessing, Kun thinks, as he runs to the room he’d found on the second floor, knowing full well that there is a crossbow that is resting inside a glass case on full display, the pride of the hunter who had lived here refusing to keep it hidden. 

Kun pulls it out, gives himself a few minutes to get used to its weight, the heavy weapon making Kun long for the longbow he’d had when he used to compete, back when the world had not been upended and tossed to fend for itself, back when scoring a hit on a bullseye didn’t mean that it stood between his life and the undead. 

The scream is not repeated, and there seems to be silence again along the street. Kun can’t be sure anymore where it had come from, but he brings the crossbow over to the balcony, scans the street with his eyes to see if there’s anyone there. 

There’s a ghoul loitering around the front of the house, but it isn’t worth the kill shot, not when it’s a solitary zombie, even if he’s got about 50 bolts at his count. He decides to start wrapping the cloth around the tip of one of them anyway, just in case he needs to send a flaming arrow out. 

He’s still scanning the street when he hears it: footfalls on the concrete, and a low buzz, snarling, the groan of a ghoul. 

There is a man running with what appears to be a katana in his hand and a heavy black backpack strapped to his back, making his way up the street. There’s blood all over his left arm, and Kun ducks from view. The last thing he needs is to attract the attention of someone bitten. 

But the man manages somehow to make his way up one of the posts. He’s quick on his feet, quicker with his hands as he makes his way along the top of a high wall. 

That’s when Kun realises that the cut on the man’s arm is still flowing freely. If he’d been bitten, the blood should have gone into stasis by now, the coagulation cascade set off by the fucked up biochemistry of whatever the virus has done to these people. 

There is a small horde of ghouls that Kun sees making their way down the street, confused because they’ve lost their prey. It is a pack of about ten or twelve undead, stumbling over themselves in their rabid haste to try to get some fresh flesh for the day. 

Kun remains hidden as the man manages to climb up and swing himself onto the balcony of the abandoned mansion across the house Kun has currently claimed as his own. 

This person could still pose a threat, but Kun lowers the crossbow, unloads the bow from the heavy weapon, and bides his time.

The newcomer pulls something out of his bag, and sees that it’s a lock-picking set. He makes quick work of the lock, and manages to pop the glass and wooden doors open with no sound. 

Kun muses, as he watches the man disappear into the room, that this man has experience. Seems to know what he’s doing. Any other panicked person would have probably tried to smash through the glass with something heavy. This man must have had to learn this the hard way if he’s made it this far on his own. 

Maybe he’s lost as much as Kun has. 

Kun sighs, and presses his back against the door frame, feeling the adrenaline start to settle and the tension leave his shoulders. 

The threat level in his head is low to intermediate. 

He worries that this stranger is going to skip houses and find his way into the house Kun is occupying. He worries with a desperate hope because this house is a sanctuary, something massive that clearly had history, had belonged to someone important, someone offensively rich, rich to the point of evacuating a house and probably moving his entire family to safer land, probably to the West even, where the outbreak had been better managed. 

But still, Kun remains thankful. 

The house is massive, and breaking in had been a bitch and a half to attempt. He’d scouted it for days to try to study getting in without sounding the alarms and having the ghouls come in waves, and when he’d managed to cut the house’s insanely complicated security system, he’d managed to get in, and found it spotless, save for the half-empty cabinets in the rooms. 

Perishables had gone bad long ago, the remainder of the house’s power focused on the circuitry for emergency lights and some parts of the first floor-- none of it going to the refrigerator in the massive expanse of the kitchen.

He’d been wary when he’d peered into the black nothingness that led down to the basement. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened back in the first few weeks of the outbreak when the carnage had been chaos and everyone was either fleeing the city or boarding up their houses, when some of the smaller families who hadn’t had the privilege of sophisticated security systems and houses on high ground had had family members who were bitten, and were left to stay hidden in basements. 

The house was empty. Abandoned in haste. A basement full of canned goods and preserved food to last him at least two years if he rationed everything right. Upstairs, a bathroom stocked with basic medications-- antibiotics, antipyretics, antidepressants.

A fucking oasis. 

He has no idea how he’s gotten this lucky. 

Kun makes his way back down into the living room, the massive glass window looking out onto the garden that has grown wild and died out in equal measure in the aftermath of the world crumbling. He sits, allows himself to loosen his shoulders, the crossbow resting on the soft of the suede that the couch is covered in, closes his eyes, exhales, and startles. 

The man he’d watched climb into the house across is now standing in the garden, staring straight at Kun. 

Kun’s entire body shoots up, the crossbow in his hands in seconds as the man continues to stare at him like he’s seen a ghost. 

All Kun can see of him is his eyes, his mouth obscured by a black surgical mask, as if those have conferred any sort of protection at all, except perhaps to dull the stench of death on the streets. 

The man still has his katana in his hand, the blood on the blade glinting in the sunlight.

Kun doesn’t even know how the fuck this guy has a katana. It must have been some commemorative thing, something stolen, like all the melee weapons Kun has collected in the last four months since the shitstorm of the Seoul getting overrun. 

All of Kun’s instincts tell him that this man is a threat, but then the man does something unexpected: he tosses his sword away, flings it off to the side like it’s not one of the single-most important tools he can have in the middle of the fucking apocalypse.

He tosses it, and brings his hands up to his face to lower the mask slowly. Brings his hands up, palms facing Kun, and begins to kneel. 

Kun watches his, the bow aimed directly at the stranger through the glass. 

The man’s mouth is moving, and Kun cannot hear a thing. He stays stock still, watching every minute move. 

The stranger is using his hands, and that is when he realizes that the man is trying to sign at him. 

Kun cannot read it, can’t understand, but this man’s hands are moving, hand over hand, fingers to his lips. 

The man is crying, his shoulders heaving as he bends forward, his hands clasped together like he’s in prayer, tears streaming down his face, and something inside of Kun shifts. 

He remembers his own desperation. He doesn’t need to know sign language or hear his voice to know that the man is asking for one thing: mercy. 

Kun keeps the bow of his weapon trained on the man, and slowly walks over to the door where he fumbles with the lock. 

The man remains in his position, his eyes on Kun.

This is dangerous, Kun knows. This man could just as easily kill him, leave him for dead, to take over this house, keep all the provisions for himself. His heart is hammering in his chest, and he can feel his body heat up, his breathing measured as he tries to remain calm. 

He doesn’t even remember how to use his voice anymore, it’s been so long since he last spoke to someone else that wasn’t a fucking zombie that he was taunting under his breath. 

The stranger’s eyes are large and bloodshot like he hasn’t slept in days. He probably  _ hasn’t _ . 

“Please,” the man says from where he is kneeling on the ground as Kun opens the door and stands in front of him. “My name is Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul. I go by Ten. I was a doctor before all of this happened. I need help.” 

Kun says nothing, but takes in everything he can to assess the situation. The man’s gaunt, his face dirty, blood smeared over his cheeks, the tears having run tracks into the grime. He looks pale, beneath the filth.

Ten. Ten. 

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now, Ten,” Kun says, and his voice is hoarse, his throat parched from disuse. His arms are starting to ache. This crossbow is heavier than he’s used to. 

“I have none,” Ten says, voice soft. “I’d kill me too, if I were in your place. But if it’s anything, I’m using the last of my energy to beg for your help, so if you don’t off me, an infection probably will-- and I don’t mean the Big Z. I haven’t been bitten.” 

Kun has absolutely no reason to trust this man. Not a single one. 

But again he remembers, remembers the Suhs who had taken him in before--

“You try anything,” Kun says. “You try anything at all, you’ll be seeing the other end of this crossbow.” 

Ten nods fervently, and promptly loses consciousness on the grass. 

“Fuck,” Kun mutters under his breath. “ _ Just  _ perfect.” 

-

Ten is burning up. 

That’s the first thing Kun notes when he manages to hook his hands beneath Ten’s armpits and lock them over Ten’s chest so he can drag this stranger into the house. Ten is dead weight, but his pulse is thready. Kun’s no doctor, but he’s pretty sure this is shock, or something close to it. 

He can’t drag Ten’s body up to the second floor, so he has to settle for laying him down on the couch. The blood from the gash on Ten’s arm seeps through the makeshift tourniquet he’d made for himself. 

Kun runs up the stairs to get what he can, finds paracetamol on the shelf. He scrounges around for anything, some semblance of a sewing kit. This house is full of so much shit, he hasn’t had time to go through it all yet, but he does find a small sewing kit, one of those small ones that hotels provide along with soap and lotion. He finds antiseptic, clean bandages. Nothing that resembles lidocaine. He does, however, find a leather belt instead. 

He brings everything down in a basin, tosses the materials off to the end of the couch while Ten sleeps, and fills the basin quickly, soaking a clean washcloth in the cool water before making his way back to the man who is out cold. 

Kun kneels next to Ten’s sleeping form, and makes quick work of cleaning what he can off of Ten’s face, the washcloth wiping what looks like days of dirt off of honeyed skin. The water runs off, sliding over sharp cheekbones and over chapped lips that look like Ten’s doing. 

The small beep of the thermometer tells Kun that Ten is fighting a raging fever, his temperature registering at 38.9 degrees Celsius. He knows for sure that this isn’t from exposure to rabid blood or saliva. Ten would be running cold if he had been, the undead’s circulatory system no longer required to generate blood through the reanimated corpse. 

Kun uncaps the bottle of hydrogen peroxide he’d taken from the bathroom, and lays another washcloth under Ten’s injured arm before undoing the tourniquet. It looks like a deep cut, a massive gash that runs through all the layers of Ten’s skin by his left deltoid and over to his bicep. He douses the wound, the clear liquid hissing as it makes contact with the dirt and blood and begins to foam up. There’s no way this will heal without some sort of suturing, but Kun’s only ever seen it done. He’s never actually done it. 

“Ten,” he says, trying to shake his companion awake. “Ten, you need to wake up. I need you to sit up.” 

Ten slowly comes to, his eyes opening as Kun prods him inelegantly.

Ten’s confused for all of three seconds before he gasps awake, pulling away from Kun. 

“Sorry, fuck,” Ten says. “Sorry, mister--”

“Kun,” Kun says shortly. “Just call me Kun.”

“Kun,” Ten says, testing the name out on his tongue. “Okay.”

“You’re running a fever, Ten,” Kun says urgently. “You’re at thirty-eight point nine, and your heart rate’s at a hundred and twenty. And your arm needs stitching. You said you’re a doctor?” 

Ten looks disoriented, but he does manage to sit up. 

“Yeah, I was in the middle of my residency when the world went tits up,” Ten says, rubbing his head. “Fuck, my head is killing me. Would you happen to have any--”

Kun thrusts the blister pack of paracetamol at Ten, who stares at it like it’s mana from heaven. 

“Oh my God,” Ten says, holding the foil and plastic in his hand. “Thank you.” 

Kun just nods. 

“There are a bunch of antibiotics here too,” Kun says, dragging the box over. "Your arm is fucked. It needs stitches."

Ten looks at Kun like he’s about to start crying again, but instead Ten takes the box of medicines calmly, sifting through until he finds a blister pack of clindamycin. 

“What is this place?” Ten asks in wonder, looking around at the expanse of the living room. “How did you manage to get in?” 

“It took a lot of time, trust me,” Kun says gruffly, not wanting to recount how long he’d had to try and work through the wires on all of the steel boxes he’d found in the perimeter of the goddamn estate. 

That is when Ten realizes the searing pain from his wound. 

“Oh, Jesus fuck,” Ten groans when he sees the damage, now that most of the blood has been cleared off by the hydrogen peroxide. “You weren’t kidding. I need so many stitches.” 

Kun is lost at sea. He has had to learn on the go to fend for himself, to break into houses and hospitals and groceries to try to get rations for himself. He has had to learn how to fight the infected, fight the remaining people who had tried to come for him, fight the ghouls that came for Johnny and his family when the attacks downtown had taken place. 

“I’m guessing this place doesn’t doesn’t have sutures, huh?” 

Kun shakes his head, swallowing his saliva before raising the small cardboard box that says “Hilton” on it. 

“This is all we’ve got, at least for the time being,” Kun replies. 

Ten closes his eyes, his shoulders slumping. 

“Fat chance there’s any anesthesia lying around too then, huh?” Ten asks, his mouth twisted wryly. “Okay. Fuck. Okay. Alcohol?”

Kun hands the half-empty bottle he’d found over, and a small plate. 

“You’re going to have to do it,” Ten says. “Look, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and for all we know we could have knives at each other’s throats in the next hour, but right now, I’m going to trust you to attempt to sew my arm back together.”

“I have no idea how to do this,” Kun says, panic seeping into his voice. “Can the needle even go through?” 

Ten is pinching the bridge of his nose with his hand like he’s running through an algorithm in his head. 

“This goes against every single thing I learned about wound management in medical school,” Ten says. “But then again we spent this entire time thinking zombies were a physical and literal impossibility. So fuck Western medicine, you’re just gonna have to find a way to get that dinky-ass needle into my flesh, kind sir.” 

Kun doesn’t expect the comment, and it startles a laugh out of him. 

“Uh, I mean, how do I even start?” 

“First we attempt to sterilize everything,” Ten says. “Thank you, by the way, for the peroxide. I don’t know where you got your training but I’m grateful for all of this.” 

Kun nods. This is the second time Ten has thanked him for something. 

They soak the needle and thread in alcohol. 

There are no gloves, just Kun’s hands and a pair of needle-nose pliers that he finds in one of the drawers in the kitchen. This is surreal, that he is sitting in this oasis of a house with a complete stranger, and he has to stitch said stranger up with a sewing kit from the fucking Hilton. 

Ten instructs him to try to curve the needle as far back as it’s willing to bend in order to make it easier to get the needle into the skin, apparently. Ten gives Kun a five-minute crash course on what he refers to as a ‘simple interrupted stitch’. Kun fucks up the surgeon’s knot four times before he finally gets it right. 

“You know how in movies the person getting stitched up like this always has like, vodka or something?” Ten says warily, gripping the leather belt in his good hand. “Yeah, do you wanna be a dear and maybe get me some?” 

Kun would protest at the request except that if he were in this situation, he definitely would want to be shitfaced for it too. He finds an entire wall of liquor in the kitchen, and calls out, “What’s your poison, Ten?”

“Oh, how sweet, you buying me a drink, Kun?” Ten says sarcastically. “Give me the strongest thing there, please.” 

Kun spots an unopened Bacardi 151 on the top shelf, and shrugs to himself. Ten did ask for the strongest thing, after all. 

When he returns to Ten’s side, Ten lets out an incredulous laugh.

“Did you know they pulled those from the shelves because the proof was too high?” Ten says, taking the bottle, the cap already unscrewed for him. 

Kun doesn’t think he can do this sober, either, but he needs to if he doesn’t want to screw this up. 

“What did you do before the world ended?” Ten asks, taking a swig of the golden liquid before wincing. 

“Hedge fund,” Kun says. “Asshole.” 

“Oh, nice,” Ten says lightly. “Trust fund baby?” 

“You could say that,” Kun says. 

Ten doesn’t ask where Kun’s family is. He doesn’t need to.

Kun is grateful. 

“Okay, Trust Fund Baby,” Ten says. “Time for you to play doctor.” 

The theoretical of everything always plays out so much smoother than the practical bit of things, Kun is harshly reminded, as Ten bites down on a leather belt with a GG buckle and Kun attempts to skewer the needle in through Ten’s skin. 

Ten, who tries to contain his yell before Kun reminds him that the doors are closed, that the glass is too thick for any undead to hear him from outside. 

Ten, who in between broken breaths, guides Kun through the process, tells him to change the angle of the pliers, tells him to bite more muscle.

Ten, whose eyes fill with tears as Kun uses the needle nose pliers and manages to successfully piece together two serrated waves of muscle and skin together.

It’s slow work, and it’s agony for the both of them, Ten asking Kun to pause on his third stitch so he can take another full gulp of the alcohol before Kun resumes. The sun is high out, the brightness filtering into the living room while Kun earns his surgical training cred in an hour. 

It takes 9 stitches, 4 breaks, and 5 gulps of rum to patch Ten’s arm together. 

The bleeding has halted by sheer force of will and makeshift sutures. Kun finds a tube of mupirocin ointment that is a month expired. Ten makes him spread it over the wound anyway. 

Clean gauze and bandages go on and around Ten’s arm, secured snug and in place with two metal teeth that bite into the elastic. 

Ten is faint by the time Kun has finished gathering all the materials to be discarded into the plastic bag, and at this point, Kun is afraid to ask when Ten is ready to take medication given that he’d polished off a third of the rum. He figures Ten needs water either way, so he brings a bottle of water each for them both. 

Ten tracks Kun’s movements with tired eyes. 

“It’s like you were sent from heaven,” Ten says, his words slurred from his infection and the alcohol. He takes several sips from the water, smacking his lips in contentment before setting the bottle down on the wooden coffee table.

Kun takes a seat on the couch and tells Ten to lie down, which Ten does promptly, his head falling on the throw pillow next to Kun’s thigh. 

“My hero,” Ten says, before his eyes slide closed and a soft snore takes over. 

Kun has no idea what happens after this. He has fought against the instinct to remain solitary since the outbreak took place, since he lost his entire family in the carnage of it, since he lost his companion in Johnny and his parents after the next wave had gone up to a category 2 alert. 

But now there is a sleeping man in what Kun has considered his refuge and his respite. 

He really could have killed Ten, and right now, the jury’s out on whether Ten really is someone he can trust. He doesn’t know what this man is capable of, how he’s managed to stay alive this entire time, how he managed to avoid infection if he actually is a doctor like he says he is, considering that their health care providers had been the first responders in the early days of the outbreak, back when they still had no idea what they were dealing with.

But Ten’s katana remains outside on the grass, and Ten is trusting Kun to not kill him in his sleep. 

Kun watches the sun make its way across the sky as the hours pass and Ten sleeps. 

He keeps a firm grip on the blade he sleeps with, and waits for Ten to awaken. 

Kun hopes he won't have to use it.

**Author's Note:**

> Several notes: 
> 
> 1\. I realize that this isn't romance per se, but I just sort of wanted the start of a story where Kun and Ten find each other. 
> 
> 2\. The scene where Kun sutures Ten's arm should never, ever, ever be replicated in real life. None of that followed standard procedure for ensuring an aseptic/sterile technique, and you should never use regular needle and thread to suture a wound closed. You should never take antibiotics without a prescription from a doctor to ensure that you are taking the right medication for the bacteria you may be fighting off. I am serious.
> 
> 3\. I am honestly sorry if this disappoints, but even if it was disappointing, I'd still love to hear from you about what you thought about this because I've never written a zombie/post-apocalyptic story before even if I live for that shit when I watch movies. Talk to me! I won't bite! :) Thank you for reading this if you've made it this far. <3
> 
> Find me at [my carrd,](https://t.co/Nm5AvDvn2U)made by the lovely [Erin](https://t.co/jwzDNfdNsI?amp=1); [twt](https://twitter.com/johnnyseo_paws).
> 
> You can also find me on[cc](https://curiouscat.me/johnnyseo_paws).


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